McCoy College Hosts Inaugural Research Symposium

By Nichole Black
^{Digital Marketing Strategist, McCoy College of Business}

SAN MARCOS, Texas — The McCoy College of Business at Texas State University hosted its inaugural Research Symposium on April 8, featuring presentations by research grant and endowed professorship recipients, plus keynote addresses by faculty recipients of the Gary V. Woods Research Award and the Robert Olney Early Career Research Award. 

Texas State's Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dr. Gene Bourgeois, delivered opening remarks. 

“I think it is imperative that faculty continue to strengthen their research portfolios,” said Dr. Bourgeois. “Integrating your research — your leading, cutting-edge findings — into the curriculum, that’s how my son and others who graduated from this college have been able to get head starts.”

The symposium featured a series of concurrent research presentation sessions held in McCoy Hall. The following faculty members presented their research:

• Dr. Iqbal Ahmed, Assistant Professor of Economics, “News and cross-border bank capital flows”
• Dr. Emmanuel Alanis, Assistant Professor of Finance, and Dr. Margot Quijano, Associate Professor of Finance, “Gradient boosted trees in factor portfolio optimization”
• Dr. Josh Daspit, Associate Professor of Management; Dr. Min (Maggie) Wan, Assistant Professor of Management; Dr. Sid Anderson, Assistant Professor of Marketing, “Understanding Minority-Owned Business Growth: Initial Insights from the SCALEUP Program”
• Dr. Tahir Ekin, 2021-2022 Presidential Fellow and Associate Professor of Quantitative Methods and Statistics, “Adversarial Forecasting”
• Dr. Aditya Gupta, Assistant Professor of Marketing, “Salespeople’s Job Crafting and Adaptive Selling Behavior: Role of Empowerment and Organizational Support”
• Dr. Ivi Popova, Professor of Finance, “Determinants of liquefied natural gas prices”
• Dr. Stephanie Solansky, Associate Professor of Management, “Enhancing Wisdom: An Empirical Analysis of a Fear-Based View”
• Dr. Jeff Todd, Associate Professor of Business Law, “Economics, Evidence, and Environmental Justice: A Sustainability Framework”
• Dr. Anna Turri, Associate Professor of Marketing, “Toxic Metals in Baby Food: How Should the FDA and Manufacturers Respond?”
• Dr. Emily Wang, Assistant Professor of Accounting, “CEO Connectedness and Corporate Tax Behavior”
• Dr. Ren Zhang, Assistant Professor of Economics, “SVAR (Mis)Identification and the Delayed Exchange Rate Overshooting Puzzle”
• Dr. Emily Zhu, Assistant Professor of Quantitative Methods and Statistics, “Identify medically unnecessary caesarean sections: a big-data study”

Two keynote presentations concluded the symposium. The Gary V. Woods Research Award Keynote was delivered by Dr. Indu Ramachandran, Associate Professor of Management, and the Robert Olney Early Research Award Keynote was presented by Dr. Mikhail Sterin, Assistant Professor of Accounting. 

“I am incredibly passionate about my research,” said Dr. Ramachandran. “I let it take ahold of me, working throughout the night, and ideas just develop whenever they develop. Let ideas evolve, write them on a napkin, whatever they may be.”

Visit research.mccoy.txstate.edu to see how McCoy College faculty foster a culture where qualitative and quantitative research advances business understanding, improves student learning, and benefits university constituents. ✯

For more information, email Twister Marquiss, manager of marketing and communications for the McCoy College of Business, at twister@txstate.edu.

About the McCoy College of Business

Established in 1970, Texas State’s business school officially became the McCoy College of Business in 2004 following a donation of $20 million by Emmett and Miriam McCoy. The college, which offers classes in both San Marcos and Round Rock, is accredited by AACSB in both business and accounting, and has graduated nearly 42,000 alumni.